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Jazz Articles about Chris Corsano
Satoko Fujii: Hyaku: One Hundred Dreams
by Dan McClenaghan
Country music artist Merle Haggard (1937 -2016) released 66 studio albums in his day, along with five instrumental recordings and several live and compilation discs. When asked in a late-career interview if his upcoming album was a good one, he answered (paraphrasing). “I don't know. I've made so many I don't know if the next one's any good or not." He was probably pulling the interviewer's leg. It is hard to imagine an artist presenting a new work ...
Continue ReadingRodrigo Amado This Is Our Language Quartet: Let The Free Be Men
by John Sharpe
Portuguese tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado adds another stunning entry to his discography with the third album from his This Is Our Language Quartet. It was actually recorded live in Copenhagen, three days before the outfit's second studio outing, A History Of Nothing (Trost, 2018) so, unsurprisingly, presents the same starry roster completed by multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Chris Corsano. The resultant blend of spontaneous free jazz, by turns refined, beautiful, exhilarating, heart-rending and belligerent, remains similarly ...
Continue ReadingRodrigo Amado This Is Our Language Quartet: Let The Free Be Men
by Mark Corroto
If you are not hip to Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, where, as they say, have you been? He has garnered acclaim for many years now, with his own Motion Trio, Lisbon Improvised Players, The Wire Quartet, Luís Lopes' Humanization 4tet, and in duos with Chris Corsano and trios with Kent Kessler and Paal Nilssen-Love. If, though, you are new to Amado, This Is Our Language Quartet with Kessler, Corsano and the doyen of free jazz Joe McPhee is the most ...
Continue ReadingMars Williams: An Ayler Xmas Vol. 4: Chicago vs. NYC
by Mark Corroto
For more than a decade, Mars Williams has been making (to borrow a phrase) Christmas music great again. He does so by exchanging the saccharine for the sublime, intersecting holiday classics with the music of Albert Ayler. Born out of his Chicago Ayler repertory band which can be heard on Witches And Devils At The Empty Bottle</em> (Knitting Factory Records, 2000), Williams applied the Gospel and spiritual nature of Ayler's methodology to Xmas music. While the eponymously titled first volume ...
Continue ReadingNate Wooley: Seven Storey Mountain VI
by Jerome Wilson
Since 2007 trumpeter Nate Wooley has been producing compositions in a song cycle collectively called “Seven Storey Mountain." The first one was performed by a trio and each succeeding version has included a greater number of musicians. The newest one, the sixth of an eventual seven iterations, is performed here by fourteen players including three vocalists. It is a compelling and heart-wrenching musical epic. one uninterrupted 45-minute piece which combines pre-recorded tapes and live performance. Part of the ...
Continue ReadingNate Wooley: Seven Storey Mountain VI
by Karl Ackermann
From 2010 onwards, composer-trumpeter Nate Wooley has explored creative music as a solo artist and through a spectrum of collaborators such as Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Mary Halvorson, Ken Vandermark, and Matthew Shipp. These projects have been offset by Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain succession of releases; Seven Storey Mountain VI is a masterwork of expressionist passion and discord, taking the series to a new level. The sound that Wooley debuted in 2009 was compact in scale, with drummer Paul ...
Continue ReadingNate Wooley: Seven Storey Mountain VI
by Troy Dostert
Long considered one of the most innovative and idiosyncratic trumpeters in the improvised music community, Nate Wooley has for many years astonished listeners with his formidable technique and broad-minded vision. Nowhere is this more evident than in his Seven Storey Mountain series, a sequence of recordings going back to 2007 that is now in its sixth iteration. With an ever-expanding cast of associates who share Wooley's iconoclasm, this is improvised music of a distinctive and ambitious character, determined to bridge ...
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